Calcutta: Youngsters aspiring to go to the US for higher studies are exploring game designing and data analytics apart from engineering and management.

An education fair at a city hotel on Saturday, organised by the United States-India Educational Foundation (USIEF), saw several students enquire about such courses.

Representatives of 27 American universities spoke with more than 600 students at the fair. "Around 186,000 Indian students went to the US in 2016-17. Education is one of the pillars of Indo-US people-to-people relations," Patti Hoffman, the US consul general in Calcutta, said.

Engineering and management continue to be the top draw but students are interested in new-age courses as well, the representatives said.

Full Sail University, based in Florida, was one of the participants. The institute offers a host of courses on gaming. "Representatives from top gaming companies like Nintendo and Ubisoft - the makers of the Assassin's Creed franchisee - visit the campus regularly. The courses are entirely project-oriented," Sarthak Agarwal, the regional representative, said.

The Indian gaming market, estimated at more than $300 million in revenue in 2017, is expected to grow manyfold in the next few years, backed by increasing Internet and smartphone penetration.

Arpan Roy, a final-year engineering student, said he was enquiring about data analytics at Tiffin University stall. "Data is the present and the future. But options are few in India."